


The Value of Nothing

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: 174 spoilers, Buried Alive, Cannibalism, Claustrophobia, Dehydration, Grief, Implied Cannibalism, M/M, Mourning, Multi, Spoilers, Torture, Whipping, Whumptober 2020, death and the afterlife, disassiociation, rating and tags may change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 18,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26736232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Collection of whumptober prompt fills for 2020. Be aware this will contain lots of dark stuff and won't be a continuous long fic, just snippets of aus/small situations that are generally going to be pretty dark. Sometimes (as with last year) I will take a whumptober prompt fic and expand on it but most of the time they're all separate from my main fic universe and just an excuse to put my boys and girls through some pain.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 243
Kudos: 132
Collections: A Wilde Ride October Collection





	1. Restrained

There is an ache in his shoulders, across the back of his neck and he knows that feeling well enough, nights spent asleep at his desk, days of working hunched over paper in light that was too dim, the aftermath of physical strain… all of these are familiar enough, but this particular strain is something different, and something that he also recognises.

He’s shackled, arms just beyond the stretch of what would be comfortable, wrists rubbed raw from where they’ve been hanging for some time. He is slumped, fully clothed (he is somewhat relieved to note) against a damp wall, and he is gagged.

Well. He’s been here before. Too many times. He’ll just have to wait a while, until whoever has captured him decides to try to pry whatever information they want out of him. He’ll just have to wait for the pain to start. He steels himself. He has friends who will be looking for him, and even as helpless as he is, he has training and his wits. And if they want him to talk at all, they’re going to have to remove the gag.

He’s not foolish enough to think they’ll remove it and let him cast spells. But he doesn’t have to use his voice for magic alone.

It’s pitch black and he can see nothing, but he can hear faint sounds of movement from quite close by. He turns his head from side to side, trying to find the source of the sounds, and hears the unmistakable clink of chains that aren’t his.

There is a sharp intake of breath. And then a voice he knows better than his own.

“Wilde?” 

_ Zolf. _

The one person he would have counted on to find him. The one person he knew would have broken enough heads, made enough noise, been stubborn enough to kick through doors and demand his return.

_ Fuck. _

He knows Zolf can see him, turns his head towards where the voice is coming from. It’s impossible to put on a jaunty smile when you’re gagged but he tilts his head and does his best.

_ Please, tell me it’s just us. Tell me they didn’t get all of us. _

“We’re gonna get out of here,” Zolf says. “Just. Don’t panic. All right?”

He shrugs again.  _ Why would I panic. When have you ever known me to panic. I am the picture of cool, calm and collected. _

Zolf snorts, and Oscar wonders when exactly he became able to read Oscar’s thoughts just from his eyes.

_ I wish I could see you.  _

There is the faint sound of boots, the jangle of keys. Whoever has them, whatever their plans, they begin now.

“I’ve got you,” Zolf murmurs. “Whatever happens. We’re going to be fine.”

Oscar does his best smile, restricted by the gag, knowing that Zolf can see it in his eyes, but his gut roils and his heart thumps against his ribcage in fear.

_ I wish I could believe you. _


	2. Pick Who Dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says on the tin for this one folks.

La Gourmand is a coward and a hypocrite and someone who never, ever forgets a grudge. Hamid had killed his favourite toy, in Paris, and Wilde… well they knew precisely now why his gnomes had been so keen to get their hands on him. 

They should have been more thorough, seeking him out after the infection was dealt with. Of all the people to survive Guivres’ flattening of Eiffel’s folly, of all the people to come through to the other side of the tragedy and torment of the last two years…

Through his despair, Zolf has time enough to blame himself.

He knew how this was going to pan out. Hamid had come so far in the past two years, but he is still afraid, the anti magic shackles that are binding them together and preventing them both from making their escape have robbed him of his scales, made his face look young again, the marks of his heritage wiped clean.

Gourmand’s thugs have dragged Oscar in by his hair. Zolf’s heart clenches to look at him, stripped to the waist, livid red lash marks on his back - the marks of punishment Gourmand had promised him, years and years before Zolf and he had even met.

They toss Oscar on the ground and he groans for a moment. Gourmand puts a boot on his chest and shoves him over so he can see who else is in the room with him and Zolf can see the exact moment he realises what’s about to happen.

“I brought you a present, dearest Oscar,” he says, smiling with those too white too sharp teeth. “Well, I actually brought you two. But I’m afraid we only have the resources to keep one of them. Halflings eat so very much, you see, and dwarves well… they can be something of a handful.”

Oscar spits blood to the side and Zolf thinks he’s never felt this level of incandescent rage before. Not even facing down a god.

“What do you propose?” Oscar asks, and his voice is hoarse and weak, and Zolf can’t help but think it’s gotten that way from screaming.

“You can pick which one you like best,” Gourmand says. “And I’ll keep it for you. A little pet that you can visit when you’ve been a good boy for us. Does that sound agreeable?”

“It would be foolish,” Oscar drags the words out, he sounds so very, very tired, “to pretend not to know what you’re going to do with the other.” He has looked at them both, once and then away. If Gourmand works out that Oscar has a preference this will go badly for all of them.

Not that it isn’t going to any way.   
“You’re not a stupid man, Oscar,” Gourmand says. “You’ve never been  _ stupid.” _

“And if I don’t pick either?”   
Gourmand spreads his hands. “Well then we’ll have to get rid of  _ both  _ of them. And it will be quite messy.”

Zolf looks at Hamid, then at Oscar. “Wilde don’t…”

“I pick the dwarf,” Oscar says. There is no emotion in his voice. It’s flat and cold and empty. Defeated.

“You  _ bastard,”  _ Zolf breathes even as Hamid draws in a startled, terrified breath, even as Gourmand laughs delightedly and takes a step towards them, drawing his long, cruel knife.

Oscar looks up at him, and his eyes are full of grief, but his mouth is a hard, determined line.

If they get out of this, that mouth says, he knows that Zolf will never be able to forgive him.

“I’ve always been selfish,” Oscar says softly. “You knew that.”

He’d honestly thought he had. 


	3. Forced to their knees

Oscar has felt betrayed many times in his life. By his father, by supposed friends, by the systems and governments he had devoted his life to most of all.

By Bosie… too many times. Enough times that the final betrayal should not have been the slightest bit of a shock. 

He did not consider that he was, himself, a betrayer, or he hadn’t, until the final confrontation with Guivres, until the dragon screeched her final defiance at the sky as she fell from it, mortally wounded, feral with infection and madness.

But the mark on his hip, the mark that he had been given in a ritual as old as the fall of Rome - well. The old magic didn’t care that Guivres was the enemy. The old magic didn’t care that she’d gone mad and wreaked destruction on the people she’d been charged to protect. The old magic had tied Wilde to Guivres and to the other meritocrats and the old magic wanted  _ payment  _ for what he had done.

As Guivres fell searing pain lanced through his middle and he dropped to his knees, crying out. Zolf was there. Of course he was, right next to him as he tore at his shirt pulling it free and yanking down his trousers to show the mark of the dragon glowing white hot and smoking. The sickening smell of burnt flesh rose from him and Oscar gasped and writhed in Zolf’s grip.

“Oscar. Oscar  _ what is it?” _

And Oscar laughed, high and loud and long and desperate as the mark burned him. “She wants to take me with her,” he said. 

Zolf grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at him, and started to channel magic. “She can’t fucking have you,” he growled.


	4. Running out of time

There should be a limit on how many times one dwarf can be trapped in a cave-in. There should be… something, some sort of get out of this particular trauma free, some kind of form he could submit to the proper authorities that made it clear that he was very much over this shit thank you.

Except that part of him wonders if perhaps it’s just fate, trying to finish him off the way he was supposed to go in the first place. He should have died with Feryn, in the mine. He should have died under the catacombs in Paris before he’d managed to destroy the world’s economy right before a global threat of epic proportions threatened every living person. 

He doesn’t believe in fate, though. He doesn’t believe in anything much, except for himself.

And Oscar.

And the inevitability of his own death, trapped under several tonnes of earth, in a tiny pocket of air that is almost certainly not going to last long enough for someone to dig him out.

“Zolf?” the voice is muffled, but Zolf would recognise it anywhere.

“Oscar?” he says, or tries to. His voice is gone, run ragged with screaming for help and panic grips him - what if Oscar doesn’t hear? What if Oscar doesn’t realise he’s stuck here, buried to his neck in mud and unable to cast? What if…

“We’re digging you out,” Oscar says. “It’ll take some time. I’m sorry, Zolf. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when…”

He should have seen this. Should have remembered his training, from years ago. The constant rain had weakened the hill, the village had cut down too many of the anchoring trees that would have kept the soil in place.

He should have run in the opposite direction, when he saw the hill begin to shift. But there were people who needed help and it’s Zolf’s  _ job  _ to help, Zolf’s responsibility to the few people left in the world who aren’t infected, the few people left in the world who are still people. 

And he wouldn’t wish this particular death on anyone. 

Not again.

Oscar hasn’t stopped talking although Zolf is finding it more and more difficult to make out the words. His head is getting light and he realises the small pocket of air he has left is depleting.

He is running out of time.

“Zolf,” he hears. “Zolf hold on. We’re coming. We’ll get to you. I promise.”

Zolf smiles to himself in the darkness. He wants to say something back. Wants to tell Oscar how much he is loved. How loved he has felt, this last year, despite their determination not to say anything. It’s clear to him, has been for a long time now, how he feels. How Oscar feels. It’s a shame he won’t get a chance to say it properly, but perhaps the knowledge is enough.

Oscar is good at reading people. Oscar must already know.

He thinks perhaps he can hear the sounds of shovels, now, biting into the dirt that surrounds him, but he doesn’t think they will make it in time.

He takes a ragged breath - probably one of his last, and closes his eyes.


	5. Rescue

Hamid is still bleeding. Zolf is tapped out, he’d been out of spells when he’d been captured and they’d given him no time to meditate in between bouts of torture. Wilde is in almost worse shape than Hamid - he’d been in Gourmand’s hands for far longer, and Zolf shudders at the missing chunks in his side, aches when Wilde winces away from his support as they stumble and lurch out of that place.

It had been painfully obvious what he’d intended for Hamid, when the first slice of the knife had cut into that small body, but Zolf hadn’t realised that Wilde had been subjected to it, at least in part, already.

He fights down nausea, remembering meals they were served while they were awaiting their fate, unidentifiable hunks of meat in luscious sauce that had seemed far, far too rich and good for prisoners.

Hamid lolls against Azu’s chest as she murmurs desperate prayers, but Zolf can see the blood dripping down on the floor as they run.

He cannot look at Oscar directly.

He cannot think about it. Cannot fit into his head the choice Gourmand had given him, the lack of hesitation in that choice.

It’s logical. There isn’t a choice he could have made that would have ended well. They were probably all going to die any way, the order in which they did it shouldn’t matter.

But it does.

It matters that Oscar chose Zolf over Hamid. It matters that Oscar knew it was a futile, useless gesture and one that would poison them all.

He’d still done it. 

He looks up at Oscar, who is draped over him, breath coming in ragged gasps. Oscar must feel his gaze because he looks down and Zolf can’t turn away fast enough. 

He doesn’t say he is sorry. 

They stumble out into safety and Azu heals Hamid, although the halfling will carry the scars for the rest of his life, not even magic can regrow those chunks of flesh, and Oscar sits, head slumped on his knees at the edge of the fire. Azu puts Hamid to sleep and doesn’t ask questions. She doesn’t know the choice that was made. 

Zolf won’t be the one to tell her.

She lies down next to Hamid, cradling him in her arms. They should set a watch, but Zolf can’t do anything but look at Oscar. It feels like hours that he sits there, eyes tracing the slump of his shoulders, the flecks of silver in his hair (when had he begun to go grey? How has Zolf missed this?) It feels obscene, like he’s somehow feeding off his despair, a loop of thoughts he cannot escape circling through his head insistently, never losing the bite of horror.

Surely it should get better, with time?

Finally, finally Oscar’s voice floats to him, croaking with damage and strain and flat with weariness.

“I was tired,” he says, without lifting his head. “I was tired and I hurt and I couldn’t face it, Zolf. I couldn’t face it without you and even though I knew it wouldn’t matter in the end, I knew he was going to kill us, that was always his plan but if…” his voice cracks and shudders and he draws a deep, ragged breath, “...if I could have a few more seconds with you, if I could go back to my cell knowing you were still alive, even if you hated me  _ you’d still be alive  _ and so I… so I…” he breaks completely then, although it is silent and Zolf can see his shoulders shaking and he tastes blood in his mouth with how badly he wants to hold him, how badly he wants to comfort him.

The most exquisite torture is the one you make for yourself.

It isn’t his fault. 

Gourmand is the one who needs to pay.

“Oscar…” he breathes.  _ It’s all right. It’s okay _ he _ wants _ to say the words. _ We can’t be expected to be strong enough to bear this. We can’t blame ourselves for what Gourmand did, made us do. _

“I’ll go,” Oscar says after a long, long minute of silent sobs, and his voice is steady now. “Before Hamid wakes up.” He stands. He is shaky on his feet, though and before he can stop himself Zolf surges up next to him to stop that dangerous wobbling.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Zolf says. “You can barely walk, Gourmand’s thugs will just pick you up again and I’m not letting him hurt us any more.”

“But I…”

“Yeah, you did. But I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. Hamid can’t say he wouldn’t. None of us know what we’re capable of - the limits we can't reach.” He smooths a hand over Oscar’s shoulder, as high as he can, tugging him down, down, until his forehead rests against Zolf’s. 

“I don’t deserve…”

Zolf is crying now. “Shut it, Oscar,” he says. “We’re safe. It’s done. We’ll make Gourmand pay. And that’s an end to it.” Oscar sinks to his knees, wrapping his arms around Zolf and burying his face in the crook of Zolf’s neck. They stay like that for a timeless interval, until Zolf gently tugs him to his own bedroll, unwilling to let him go.


	6. Get it Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some Actual Cannibalism Here Folks

La Gourmand likes to feed him bits of his own skin.

He takes pieces of him, from his thigh, from the fleshy underside of his upper arm, from his stomach. He heals them up afterwards - a healing potion or a frightened cleric to hand to make sure Oscar isn’t permanently damaged. 

And then he cooks them. In front of Oscar.

It is a terrible thing, to know the exact odor of your own flesh as it crisps in a pan of duck fat.

A more terrible thing to taste it.

The first time Gourmand gently parts Oscar’s lips with his gloved hand (he is very, very particular about hygiene in the kitchen, where Oscar hangs like a prized cut of beef) and places a perfectly cooked strip of himself in his mouth Oscar spits it out. 

Gourmand slaps him. It’s nothing, really, compared to the other things that have happened to him in the days he has been trapped here, but it’s enough of a shock for Oscar’s mouth to fall open again, for Gourmand, with a speed and finesse that a man of his age should not possess, to grab his jaw, force another piece of flesh into his mouth and push it shut.

Perhaps he has good reflexes because he is so well fed, Oscar has a moment to think hysterically before his jaw is clamped around the meat in his mouth.

It is beautifully cooked, delicately spiced and the flavours that spread across his palate are delectable enough for the most expensive restaurant in London. Oscar gags.

_ Get it out get it out get it out  _ he thrashes against his bonds but La Gourmand just laughs, massages his throat and holds Oscar’s nose as though Oscar is an errant pet that will not take its medicine until Oscar is forced to swallow.

He gasps for breath and tears are streaming down his throat as La Gourmand steps back and smiles, popping another morsel into his own mouth and chewing with evident enjoyment.

“You do keep yourself well, Oscar,” he says. “You should last us a good long while, I think. Maybe until the solstice feast?”

Oscar wants to retch, wants to throw up the contents of his stomach, but it’s been days since he’s properly eaten anything and his body won’t obey his mind.

Gourmand pats his cheek, then caresses it, his fingers moving over Oscar’s skin the same way a butcher feels out the best place to cut a fillet, and Oscar shudders. 

“There’s a good boy, Oscar,” Gourmand says, and leans forward, licking a line up the scar on Oscar’s cheek. His breath smells of meat and spice, and Oscar wants to weep.


	7. Enemy to Caretaker

It’s only been a week, since he’s been paired with Oscar Fucking Wilde, and while Zolf has learned a lot about himself and what he’s willing to put up with over the past year he still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with the insufferable arrogance of the man.

At least now, compared to the excessive flamboyant  _ ponciness  _ of him in London he is someone subdued. He doesn’t seem to be so big on making himself pretty, for one, dressed in somber greys and with his hair neatly trimmed instead of flopping artfully over his eyes.

He looks tired. 

He looks human.

Zolf doesn’t think about that though. He’s worked with people he doesn’t like before now and he can do it again and whatever else Oscar Wilde is, he’s not Bertie, and that’s a visceral relief.

He is his own special brand of idiot, though. He’d been frayed at the edges in Paris, but Zolf had been caught up in his own issues then and hadn’t really noticed exactly how tired the man was. Now, forced into close proximity with him in ways he hadn’t been back when he’d first discovered what Wilde meant to the team, he starts to notice the little ways he doesn’t take care of himself. The little ways he punishes himself.

Zolf knows that’s what he’s doing, because he wakes up every day and looks in a mirror at someone who does exactly the same thing. But Zolf’s better at it - Zolf’s been doing it for longer, Zolf knows he can only go so far before he becomes a useless wreck and he’s…

Well he supposes he’s older and just knows better. Although given his behaviour on the airship, maybe he’s just been burned more recently.

Oscar pushes himself too far too often. Zolf finds him with his head buried in his arms, asleep at his desk, far more often than is healthy. He tries to cure him of fatigue and that’s when he finds out that he can’t use his magic any more, that his own spells are useless. It explains a lot about how he looks these days, but Zolf is still furious.

“You didn’t think this was worth mentioning to me?”

“I’m not a field agent, Zolf,” Oscar says, reasonably enough. “When we’ve got a team together you’ll be the one going out and into danger. Here… well. The only danger to me here is…”

“Yourself,” Zolf finishes for him. “Go the fuck to sleep, Oscar. If I can’t cure your fatigue the only other way I have to get you unconscious you won’t like.”

Wilde raises an eyebrow, at that, but there is a hint of a smile on his lips, and he goes.

It’s an ongoing struggle, however. 

They’re about three weeks settled in Japan when Zolf snaps.

Oscar hasn’t slept for thirty-two hours. Zolf knows, because he’s been counting, and the man looks up as Zolf walks into his office. He has to wear soft leather slippers over his metal feet inside so he doesn’t damage the tatami mats on the floors, but it doesn’t stop the heavy tread of them.

Oscar’s expression is sly and teasing at the same time. “Come to knock me unconscious?” he asks and Zolf just grunts, comes around to his chair, and grasps Oscar by the upper arm.

“No,” he says.

Oscar blinks up at him but doesn’t resist as Zolf hauls him to his feet. “Something else, then, Mr Smith?” he says, and his voice dips lower.

_ “Definitely not,”  _ Zolf growls this time, resolutely ignoring the brief flare of heat in his belly. “You’re going to bed. And you’re going to sleep, properly.”

“I have more to…”

“You have nothing to do that’s more important than sleeping right now,” Zolf says. Wilde opens his mouth to argue but something in Zolf’s expression must stop him, because instead he just blinks.

Zolf thinks he must be going mad for a second, because he’s sure he sees tears in the corners of Wilde’s eyes as his blinks become more rapid and he turns his head away, allowing Zolf to tug him towards his room.

His suspicions are confirmed when, once they reach Wilde’s room, Zolf hears him give a shuddering inhale. 

Zolf has heard that sound from too many people - from himself - not to know what it means.

He steers Wilde into his room and onto his bed. Wilde keeps his face turned away from Zolf as much as he can, but Zolf for once is reluctant to leave him to his grief, and puts a hand on Wilde’s shoulder rather than moving away.

“You right, Wilde?”

That breath comes again, and there isn’t anywhere for him to hide his face now, his hair isn’t long enough and Zolf’s dark vision means that he doesn’t even have the cover of night to hide his tears.

The silver of their tracks down Wilde’s face is oddly beautiful in the moonlight.

“I don’t think,” Wilde says, low and rough, “that it’s entirely possible to be “right” at the moment, do you Zolf?”

“Guess not,” Zolf says, letting his hand drop from Wilde’s shoulder and sitting next to him on the bed. It’s not how they normally do things. They keep their distance from each other. This is a professional relationship.

Nothing more.

But Zolf reaches out and finds Wilde’s hand and Wilde’s long fingers curl around his and squeeze.

“Get some sleep,” Zolf says. “Please.”

Wilde gives him a lopsided smile in the darkness. “Well,” he says, “since you asked so very nicely. I’ll do my best for you, Zolf.”

Zolf disentangles his hand, not willing to acknowledge that he’s doing it reluctantly, and gives Wilde’s thigh a gentle pat before getting to his feet.

“Zolf?” Wilde says, as he reaches the door. He looks back, and Wilde is still smiling, a soft, sad expression that Zolf has never seen on him before.

“Wot?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah. Um. It’s fine, Wilde,” he says. “We’re…”

Wilde gives a small chuckle. “...fine,” he finishes, and Zolf nods, and Zolf leaves him there.

They’re fine.


	8. Where has everybody gone?

Being alone was the hardest part. He’d not had to be alone when he was with the clutch. Sure, sometimes he went out on jobs by himself, it was easier to run and hide when you were small and single, but that was in a city, where there were people all around you even if you weren’t talking to them.

But every time people left, every time he was forced to leave, there was always a brief moment like that one in Eva’s cell in Amsterdam when he realised, fully realised that his clutch was gone and he’d never see any of them again.

His heart is heavy in his chest and he doesn’t try to stop the tears as he turns his attention away from where Azu and Hamid and Sasha had been, a millisecond before, and back to the factory he is determined to destroy. Vesseek can look after themself. Azu and Hamid and Sasha can look after each other.

The noises of the factory around him are mechanical and alien and nothing at all like the breath of his siblings, but it is loud enough to crowd the more panicked thoughts from his head. It’s cold, away from the harsh light of the Damascus sun, but Grizzop sets himself to his work and the cold fades into the heat of straining muscles and exertion and  _ purpose. _

He might be on his own, but he has a job to do, a hunt to finish. 

And his lady is always with him.


	9. Self Sacrifice

Self sacrifice has never been his brand, he tells himself in Paris, as he walks away from the ship that holds his team, back towards La Gourmand and his thugs, back through the rain and the wet. The pain in his ankle is severe, the pain in his lower back from Amelia’s boot is somehow worse. Of course she hadn’t forgiven him. 

There was too much there to forgive.

He didn’t blame her.

Self sacrifice has never been his brand but he  _ had  _ to get the team to Prague, had to get them away from this. Had to make it there afterwards…

_ Gods how the fuck was he going to get out of Paris? _

He managed to stay upright for the trip to the edge of the hangar, so he was out of sight of them when he collapsed against the outer wall. That was something, he supposed. His pride was still wounded, but at least he hadn’t fallen flat on his face in a puddle.

His ankle throbbed with dull agony and he pulled up his trouser leg to see the damage. Not broken, but definitely sprained, possibly some ligaments torn. Now that the pressure was off it was swelling rapidly and Oscar took a deep breath, scraping at the very bottom of his magic barrel for a wisp of a healing song.

It wasn’t enough to take away the pain, but it was enough that he could stand again.

Self sacrifice, he decided, was awful. Next time he wouldn’t offer to leave. Next time he’d let Earhart shoot him. Next time he’d hide more effectively than just behind Bertie.

_ He was so godsdamned tired. _

He took a deep breath, and started limping back towards Paris.


	10. Bleeding

He doesn’t notice it, at first, because he’s not looking for the right colour. 

He knows, of course, that goblin blood is green rather than red, but it’s an intellectual knowledge, not an instinctive one, and Grizzop always wears green, so the darker patch around his middle is easily mistaken for sweat.

At least until Grizzop starts slowing down.

Bandits, of all things, on the roads. Of course there are repercussions to the breakdown of meritocratic society but Oscar does really think that common banditry is so utterly gauche.

He is no slouch when it comes to looking after himself on the road but it was something of a relief to have Grizzop as backup on the road between London and Somerset, and the bandits were easily enough to dispatch. 

Or so he’d thought.

Oscar searches the bodies for any sign of something more sinister than desperate people trying to rebuild their lives and that’s when he first notices the patch of darker green on Grizzop’s tabard. He frowns for a good long minute - it’s not usually where Grizzop would sweat, and it wasn’t raining so he shouldn’t be…

...damp there…

“Grizzop you’re bleeding,” Oscar says. Grizzop blinks and looks down.

“Wot?”

“Here. Look.” Oscar moves to stand up, just in time for Grizzop to sway on his feet. 

“Oh. Bugger,” he says, tipping forward into Oscar’s arms. 

“Lay on hands,” Oscar says, panic touching his voice as he slumps back onto the ground, Grizzop cradled in his lap like a child. 

Grizzop smiles. “You want me to touch myself, Wilde?”

Oscar doesn’t have time for innuendo. He grabs Grizzop’s hand and presses it over the sticky dampness on his front. “Yes I want you to touch yourself, you stupid goblin. Heal yourself.”

Grizzop murmurs under his breath and Oscar sighs in relief as he feels the familiar warmth and fresh forest smell of Artemis’ touch, his hand tightening on Grizzops and searching his eyes for signs that the healing is taking hold.

“Worried about me,” Grizzop says, when his prayer is finished. 

Oscar smooths his free hand down over one of Grizzop’s ears, watching him sigh and shudder slightly under his touch.

“Yes,” he says simply. “Always.”


	11. Defiance, Struggling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did a bit of an edit on this one cos I realised I'd done some weird positioning.

“What do _you_ think, pirate, of all the things that hurt him over the years, hurt him the worst?” 

Zolf was still in shock that Dorian was even alive. He’d watched Hamid reduce the man to ashes in Paris. This shouldn’t be possible. This _wasn’t_ possible. 

Unless he’d had a twin, or something similar he…

Dorian hadn’t turned when he’d asked the question. He waited for an answer, and when Zolf didn’t give him one, he stood, and backhanded Oscar across the face.

Oscar let out a muffled grunt, all he could manage around the gag. “I asked you a question, _dwarf.”_

Zolf pulled at the chains that held him instinctively, but they were heavy and unbreakable.

A hand, long fingered and delicate (very, very like Oscar’s, actually) grasped his beard and yanked his head until he was forced to meet Dorian’s perfectly shaped grey eyes.

There was something very, very wrong here. Oscar was gagged and tied very firmly to a chair in the middle of the room that Zolf was chained in. They were facing each other, but Dorian had been utterly focused on Oscar for the first half hour he’d come in. It had been eerie, watching him watch Oscar, as if he were studying a piece of art.

“Why the fuck would I tell you that?” he spat. 

Dorian's eyebrow twitched, a tiny movement, a dismissal, a soft, scentless sigh escaping his lips, as though Zolf was the most disappointing errant child, as though he had failed some sort of test. Zolf waited for something from him, his own blow, perhaps, or another word. Something that might indicate he was, on some level, human.

Nothing. Instead, Dorian released Zolf's beared and turned his attention back to Oscar, tilting his head, moving almost close enough to kiss. “He didn’t have this scar, last time we met,” he said softly, reaching out to run a finger down Oscar’s face. Zolf could see Oscar flinch and try to lean away, but he was too securely bound to get away from that finger. “He was always so _obsessed_ with beauty. His own. Other people’s…” at this finally, Dorian tilted his head to look Zolf’s way, and Zolf felt his blood run cold at the expression in his eyes, “ _mine especially.”_

The knife Dorian drew was long, curved and wickedly sharp. Zolf threw himself against the chains again.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you _fucking dare…”_

Dorian raised the knife. And smiled.


	12. Broken Trust

Hamid had never been scared of showing his emotions. He knew that it was one of the reasons he was such an easy target, when he first got to Cambridge. He knew it was one of the reasons he’d fallen in with Gideon. Gideon liked it when he could see the consequences of his actions on Hamid’s face, see that brief moment of pain or outrage or, occasionally, encouragement he could catch with his keen, cruel eyes before Hamid managed to school himself against it.

He was frightened now. 

He was frightened and he was betrayed and he was miserable and nothing Azu said could help. He couldn’t tell her. The choice that had been made in that cell was a secret he would have to keep with Zolf and Oscar for the rest of his life.

He didn’t want to have that secret for her. He wished with all of his might to erase that memory, not know the line that Oscar had been forced to cross, the choice he had made.

They travelled in silence, back to the safe house. The morning after their first night on the road Hamid woke first - still sore in places despite Azu’s excellent healing - and looked over to see Oscar and Zolf sleeping together, Zolf’s arms gently cradling Oscar’s head against his chest, expressions slack and peaceful.

The surge of anger that gripped him was almost enough to make him retch.

He couldn’t help it. No matter the litany that went through his mind  _ you would have done the same for Azu, you know it, it wasn’t his fault, it was Gourmand’s, they were all safe now, there is no harm done… _

But there  _ was  _ harm done. There was irreparable harm done in that room with the three of them under the power of someone who took delight in breaking them down to their component parts so they could be  _ consumed. _

Sometimes these things were not metaphors.

Hamid squared his shoulders and schooled his face and wondered if Gideon would be able to read his emotions  _ now. _

He had come so far.

He wished he could go back.


	13. Drowning

The first time they have to travel by boat Zolf hesitates.

“This is definitely the only way?”

“Teleportation is imprecise and difficult, Zolf, you know that as well as I do. And I’m not letting anyone go via planar shifting not after we lost Eldarion.”

“You know I  _ could  _ learn how to planar shift it’s…”

“Absolutely not, Zolf. You’re not risking yourself and I don’t particularly feel like looking through my eyeballs from two thousand feet behind myself. Any way…” he rattles one leg and Zolf can hear the chink of his shackles “you’d have to go alone.”

“That is beginning to get inconvenient,” Zolf says, and Oscar rolls his eyes.

“You always had a talent for understatement.”

They board the ship.

Zolf’s tension rackets upwards the further they get from shore. “There’s a giant metal squid thing somewhere in the water, you know that, don’t you Wilde?” he says, pacing the tiny cabin they are sharing. Zolf has a hammock. Wilde, a little green around the edges, has insisted on taking a cot. Hammocks are so very undignified.

“We’ll be fine,” Wilde says. “It’s only a short trip across the strait. We’ll be there before you even realise we’re on the wa…”

Zolf spins and he is _glaring_ and Oscar remembers with sudden, absolute clarity, exactly how cold and damp it had felt to be doused by him in Paris. And if he decides to do it here, Oscar cannot deflect it.

He holds up his hands. “Let’s just… try to get some rest, eh?” he says, knowing that he sounds like an incompetent parent.

Zolf rolls his eyes, but climbs nimbly enough into his hammock. Oscar lies down on his cot, watching the gentle swing of it next to him for a few minutes before extinguishing the candle.

“Goodnight, Mr Smith,” he says.

“‘Night Wilde.”

#

He is woken by a thump as Zolf falls out of his hammock. Oscar runs to him, finding him thrashing, his eyes wide open but obviously not seeing, his hands at his throat. He is not breathing - in fact he is turning red with the effort  _ not  _ to.

“Mr Smith!” Oscar grasps him by the shoulders, marvelling for a second at how solid they are under his hands - Zolf Smith is  _ not  _ a slender person, he is broad and strong and Oscar is completely certain he cannot hear or feel him.

He doesn’t think, he hauls back and slaps Zolf across the face. “Zolf!”

Zolf convulses and sits up, gasping for breath, tears and sweat streaking his cheeks, letting out a string of the most colourful swear words Oscar has ever come across in a combination of English, dwarvish and even ancient greek.

When he manages to focus on Oscar he blinks. “Fuck,” he says, and his voice is hoarse.

“You were, I think, dreaming,” Oscar says. 

“Drownin’” he says, on a shuddering exhale. “I was drowning.”

Oscar still has his hand on Zolf’s shoulder, smoothing backwards and forwards over it, meaningless soothing movements. His other palm is stinging from the slap. “Thanks for waking me.”

“Wasn’t sure it would work,” he says, “considering you were still asleep when you hit the ground.”

Zolf manages a chuckle. “Not the first time I’ve fallen out of a hammock.”

“Perhaps you should take the cot? Just in case it happens again?”

Zolf runs a hand through his hair. “Doubt I’ll be sleepin’ again any time soon,” he says, and gives Oscar a wan smile. “It’s only another day on the water. You sleep. I can manage till we get to land.”

It would, Oscar decides, be highly hypocritical to argue with Zolf about this, so settles for a simple “you’re sure?” in response.

“If you won’t let me planar shift I can at the very least cure my own fatigue,” Zolf says, smiling slightly, although his voice is still raw and shakes slightly.

Oscar gives his shoulder one final squeeze, then fetches Zolf’s prosthetics for him. “Do you need help getting them back on?” he says.

“No, I’m right.”

“All right.” Oscar goes back to his cot, resettling, listening to the sounds of Zolf reattaching his legs.

“Wilde?” he hears, after a minute or so.

“Yes, Mr Smith?”

“Thank you.”

Oscar smiles into the darkness, and closes his eyes.


	14. Branding

There is nothing better than running his fingers over the planes of Oscar’s skin, than exploring every hair, every dip and ticklish patch, everything that makes Oscar suck in a breath or laugh or giggle or moan.

Zolf could spend his entire life doing this, mapping the extent of Oscar’s body, memorising every curve. Pressing his lips to…

“AHhh!”

Zolf pulls back, blinking in shock at the noise but more than that, at how Oscar’s hip had spasmed under his lips, at the heat that he could feel coursing through them.

“What…?” Zolf looks up to see Oscar’s head turned away from him, uncharacteristically shy, especially given what he was doing a few seconds ago. 

“Nothing.”

Zolf looks down to where he was kissing, wondering if he’d somehow managed to bite or mark or…

Oh.

“I didn’t think you had any tattoos,” he said softly. 

“Not a tattoo,” Oscar says, and he turns his head back. Zolf sees his throat move in a swallow. “It’s a brand, actually. Well. Something I’ve come to see as one.”

“There’s magic in it.” It’s not a question. Oscar bites his lip and nods. “Does it hurt when I touch it?” 

“Not… not exactly.” Oscar shifts a little on the bed, moving back so he can sit up and look at the spot on his hip more easily. Zolf starts to back away, but one of Oscar’s long arms shoots out and keeps him where he is, the other one drifting down to trace around the outline of the golden dragon burned into his hip.

It’s pale - one of the reasons Zolf hadn’t seen it immediately against the white of Oscar’s skin, and beautiful.

“Guivres?” Zolf asks. 

Oscar nods. “There is a ritual. When you are sworn in as an agent. I usually… cover the mark but…” he spreads his hands. “I’d fallen out of the habit.”

Zolf leans down, keeping eye contact with Oscar as he goes. He kisses next to the mark, then takes Oscar’s hand and turns it over, planting another kiss to the palm. “You’re not hers,” he says, and he would be surprised at the low note of possession in his voice, except that he is past being surprised about his feelings for Oscar Wilde.

Oscar lets out a shaking breath, then cards a hand through Zolf’s hair. “No,” he says, “no I am  _ not.” _


	15. Magical Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 174 FOLKS
> 
> Skip this chapter unless you have listened!!
> 
> HUGS AND LOVE!!!

It still doesn’t seem real. The bodies are laid out on the ritual tables and the Ursine are chanting, readying for magic that they will need to call on.

It’s a simple enough process, they’d explained to them on their way to the village. A grim procession of grief. Zolf had stayed as close to Wilde’s body as possible, unwilling to let him out of his sight, even if the sight of him was like a lance of pain through his chest every time.

_There is hope. There is still hope._

Zolf knows that the hope is thin.

It’s a simple enough process.

“The healing of the body is easy, but the souls have departed. Hopefully not too far. But they will need to be fetched back. We cannot do this. The souls need to recognise those who come to get them.” Soura looks at each of them in turn. “If you care for them enough to find them, if they care for you enough to listen, you can call them home.”

One person for each of the dead. 

“I’ll get Carter,” Barnes says, stepping forward. Zolf isn’t surprised, but it’s clear from Hamid’s expression that he is. Cel, though, gives a shaky nod in Barnes’ direction. “He’s my responsibility,” Barnes says, almost apologetically.

“He’ll listen to you,” Zolf says, roughly. “Good choice.”

Skraak steps forward and says in his rough English “Meerk and Sassraa are mine.” 

Hamid looks like he’s about to protest, but Skraak fixes him with a stare and Hamid closes his mouth, almost with a snap.

Zolf’s mouth twitches in the closest thing to a smile he’s managed since _Wilde wide eyed and staring at nothing brutally skewered by_ since it happened.

“You can fetch only one soul,” Soura says, and Skraak’s frown deepens. Hamid opens his mouth again but Cel squeezes his shoulder and steps forward.

“I’ll fetch Sassraa, little buddy,” they say. “She’s gotta come back and help me fix the ship, after all.”

Skraak looks up at Cel, searching their face for a second, before giving a short nod. 

There’s only one left. And Zolf has always known he was going to go, isn’t at all surprised when Azu and Hamid and Cel and _everyone_ look at him.

They’ve all _known._ This entire time. He takes a step. “I’ll bring him back,” he says. _Or I’ll stay there with him._


	16. Forced to Beg

Grizzop struggled against the rope they had looped around him. They’d trussed him up like a hog after the third time he’d managed to wriggle out, hands pinned to his side, rope tight enough to hurt (not tight enough to cut off his circulation) coiled around his waist. His feet were free so they could force him to move in front of them. It was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong  _ he  _ was the one who should have hunted  _ them  _ down he was  _ not prey he was NOT prey  _ it was  _ wrong. _

And there was the reason he’d been captured. Wilde was not tied up - he was too battered to be a flight risk, they must have assumed. The man had so many enemies. When they got out of this Grizzop was going to get out of him exactly who they all were and he was going to go on a hunt to end all hunts, to end this, to stop it from happening, stop him from having to see Wilde like this.

His hair was matted with what looked like blood and his lip was split and one eye was darkened black and his shirt was in tatters and  _ Grizzop was going to kill all of them. _

“Ah,” the leader - Grizzop didn’t even know the man’s name. Some posh toff that Wilde had gotten on the wrong side of. One of the few that survived the infection intact. “Your saviour is here, Oscar,” he kicked at Wilde, getting his attention, and Wilde looked up into Grizzop’s face for a moment, before clenching his eyes shut and turning away. One of the thugs next to him grabbed him by the neck and forced his head back around.

“No Oscar, please. You haven’t seen any of your friends for so long. Take him in. Let him comfort you.” 

“I’m going to murder all of you,” Grizzop said, as Oscar let out a sigh and opened his eyes. He looked so very tired.

The suit laughed. It was an ugly, snorting sound. “How on earth do you think you are going to manage that, my tiny friend?” he said. 

“My lady will…”

“No.” He smiled. “You’re not going to murder us. You’re not going to free Oscar and walk off together into the sunset. What you’re  _ going  _ to do is beg me for his life.”

Grizzop didn’t hesitate. “Fuck off,” he said.

The toff stepped forward and backhanded Grizzop across the face. Grizzop spat blood and bared his teeth at him. To his credit, this didn’t seem to frighten him, but then he wasn’t the one trussed up like a game bird in front of the man he’d sworn to save… 

The toff nodded to the the thug next to Wilde, who drew a knife and held it against Wilde’s throat. Wilde let out a soft sigh and Grizzop got the impression that he wanted to close his eyes again. How much had they put him through already, that he wasn’t even  _ speaking.  _ The Wilde Grizzop knew would have had a quip for every sentence out of that asshole’s mouth but he was silent and accepting and Grizzop’s heart  _ ached. _

“You will beg for his life,” the toff said, “or I will end it.”

His legs were kicked out from under him and he dropped to his knees. The thug pressed the knife into Wilde’s skin, and Grizzop saw a thin line of bright red blood against its paleness.

He swallowed. The others would come, soon enough. He just needed a little bit of time.

“Please,” he said, softly. 

“Please what?”

Grizzop’s stomach roiled. This was wrong.  _ He was NOT prey. _

“Please don’t kill him.”

“Again.”

“I…” he wet his lips. “I’m begging you.”

“You can do far better than that.”

Grizzop looked back at Wilde, who for the first time was showing… something. Some sort of emotion. His eyes were glistening and wet and Grizzop saw him lean forward, headless of the knife at his throat. “Grizzop…” he said, and it became obvious why he hadn’t been talking. The hoarse, rasping mess of a sound that his vocal chords produced made Grizzop wince in painful sympathy.

“Please don’t kill him. We…  _ I need him.” _

“Better. But I think a little bit more, don’t you?”

_ I am going to murder all of you and I’m going to laugh while I’m doing it. We’re going to bathe in your blood and your screams and I will offer your skin up to my lady as a trophy. _

Grizzop didn’t drop his gaze from Wilde’s, opened his mouth and let the words stream out, a jumble of  _ please  _ and  _ don’t  _ and  _ he means too much to me. _

Oscar was crying now, and Grizzop realised he was as well, a steady stream of tears mixing with blood from his split lip.

_ Lady give him back. _

_ Please. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grizzop is me, kind of, right now.


	17. Wrongfully Accused

“This is  _ insanity,” _ Zolf says as they shackle Wilde’s wrists together.  _ Gods  _ but that hurts, almost as much as the ridiculousness of this situation - Wilde had worn anti magic shackles for  _ years  _ and now they were going to clap him in irons for not being… what? Sufficiently anti meritocratic? When the whole of the British nobility, pretty much, were todies for them for decades, when none of _them_ had lifted a finger to help London or Europe before it fell.

Why was this happening? “The man literally  _ died  _ fixing the world and you’re dragging him for a trial? He  _ saved  _ you!”

“The evidence is all there,” Carson said, and it was all Zolf could do not to punch the stupid lawyer in his stupid face. “Wilde worked for the meritocrats. He is marked by  _ Guivres  _ and she killed  _ thousands  _ during the war, not to mention what she did to…”

“He worked for the meritocrats  _ before  _ the infection, but he defected you utterly worthless, pumped up, fish brained fucking  _ bureaucrat _ …”

“Zolf,” Oscar says, voice a lot more calm than Zolf’s. “Don’t worry.”

“They’re arresting you!” Zolf says. “Why can’t I worry?”

Oscar laughs. “Because you know as well as I do this is farcical. There’ll be a trial and I’ll be acquitted and then we can go home and forget about all of this, yes?”

“Oscar…”

Oscar steps forwards and leans down, kissing Zolf before he can finish what he was going to say. The kiss is soft and soothing and Oscar  _ knows  _ exactly how to get his way in an argument and it’s  _ not fair  _ and he isn’t exactly going to be able to  _ kiss the jury to make them let him go…  _

When he pulls back he doesn’t pull back very far. “And if they convict me, you’ll just break me out. Won’t you?” he says, so soft and low that the lawyers and the guards cannot hear.

Zolf stops himself from snorting. This is  _ stupid  _ but Oscar has a point.

They went rogue before. No reason why they can’t do it again.

Zolf’s reaches up and tangles his fist in Oscar’s hair, pulling him back down for another, bruising kiss. “Of course we bloody will,” he whispers. 


	18. Panic Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for 174 folks.

It happens less and less often, over the years, but there are still nights when he wakes up gasping, leaning over to check that Oscar is breathing.

Because he wasn’t. Because he’d been alive and then he’d been dead and there hadn’t even been a moment where Zolf could have stopped it. 

This time the dream is so vivid that Zolf wakes up with tears in his eyes and the idea that he could  _ not  _ check doesn’t even enter his mind.

Oscar comes awake with a gasp and that should be  _ enough  _ but it isn’t  _ it isn’t  _ he runs his hands over Oscar’s chest  _ (it’s warm but he was still warm when he found him the first time it took hours for him to completely cool it doesn’t mean anything it doesn’t mean...) _ and tries desperately to feel the beating of Oscar’s heart even though his own is going so fast and hard he wouldn’t be able to discern it in the cacophony.

Oscar knows what to do, though, just as Zolf knows what to do when it’s Oscar’s turn to wake up panting and sweating in the night, and he grabs Zolfs hands and brings them to his lips even as Zolf is heaving and gasping and his voice is rough with tears and fear  _ “you’re all right, you’re all right you’re all right…” _

Oscar kisses his knuckles and makes meaningless noises and lets Zolf touch him all over. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here I’m not leaving you I promise, Zolf.”

It’s just words but they get through eventually, the soft, insistent murmuring, the feeling of Oscar’s skin under his hands, the fact that his chest is raising and falling with breath and not still and split open and empty and…

He comes back to himself, cradled against Oscar’s chest, Oscar’s lips trailing kisses across the top of his head, Oscar’s hand cupping the back of his neck, the other smoothing down Zolf’s arm and back up again, gentle, repetitive motions.

“I’m sorry,” Zolf says, eventually.

“You never have to be sorry for this,” Oscar murmurs back, still dropping kisses between words. “We made it,” he says. “We’re alive. We’re together. I’m not going anywhere.”

Zolf shuts his eyes and kisses the parts of Oscar he can reach and breathes in his scent and his breath and his  _ life  _ and he can almost…  _ almost  _ believe him.


	19. Grief/Mourning

The graveyard outside Cromhall is small - just like the town. Far smaller than he remembers. Which yeah, that’s gotta be something that happens, isn’t it? You grow up and you move on and what used to seem enormous seems bounded and tiny.

It had felt bounded and tiny when he’d  _ lived  _ here.

He can see the appeal though, now. Can laugh at how desperate he’d been to escape, given where he and Oscar have settled. A small town near the coast of Ireland - smaller even than Cromhall, a cottage cosy and warm, a community much the same as this one.

He didn’t want to come back here to live, but he can understand, now, precisely why his parents chose this place, after the death and the drama and the politics of the Harelquins. They’d craved simplicity.

They’d had it, for a while. How long Zolf doesn’t even know, he’d not asked the Harlequins he knew when his parents had decided to turn their back on the organisation, only that it was before Zolf was old enough to remember any home before this one.

He wonders, sometimes, if his mother’s second pregnancy had been the thing to spark it, if  _ he  _ was the reason they’d decided to settle here. 

Fate, it seems, had a sense of tragedy. The death and excitement they’d tried to escape had hit them in their very homes. 

It was no wonder, really, that Zolf had lost faith in gods.

Still, perhaps in a few years he and Oscar will get tired of their own domesticity. Oscar has already taken a few trips to Trinity to speak to his former colleagues. The series of articles he penned about the plague and the war won awards that sit and gather dust on their mantlepiece and Oscar had received them and given a pretty speech and not touched his scar once as he was applauded and lauded.

They had not stayed at the party afterwards for long.

So perhaps, in a few years Oscar will want to move to London, or Paris, to the centre of the society he had once worked so hard to infiltrate. 

But not yet.

Today he is holding Zolf’s hand as they walk through the spring flowers and grass towards a certain set of graves, ones that Zolf hasn’t visited for more than two decades. In his other hand Zolf is carrying a bouquet he’d bought from the florist in the town centre in a panic, forgetting that the entire point of visiting a grave is to mark it, to let those still living know that the dead were being remembered.

For all the loss that has surrounded him, Zolf has been to very, very few funerals.

Feryn’s grave is next to his parents’, they’d bought the family plot after the accident. There is space for Zolf here, he knows, but he doesn’t think he’ll take it, when his time comes. He doesn’t belong here, next to the family he never actually knew. They’d kept so many secrets from him and in the end it hadn’t saved him from what he suspects now is something in their blood. The desire to be moving, to be doing, to be  _ fixing  _ things. The knowledge that the world is broken and it’s up to him to do something about it, not just sit back and relax into it.

They’d tried to pretend they were miners, they’d tried to pretend they were a happy, cosy family living a simple life. Maybe his parents had succeeded. Maybe Feryn would have, if he’d been given the chance. But Zolf had taken that away and then…

Well. He supposes he’d paid the price for it.

He lays the flowers on Feryn’s grave. Oscar steps away to give him some time, but Zolf finds he doesn’t have anything to say, doesn’t feel anything stronger than distant, aching regret.

“You should have told me,” he says, finally. “I know I was an idiot, and reckless and headstrong and all the other things Da used to call me but if I’d  _ known…” _

He shakes his head. Regret is pointless. They’re dead and his life has moved past theirs and he doesn’t even know, now, why he bothered to come.

He realises he is crying with faint surprise. It happens a lot more these days, now that they’ve  _ stopped.  _ Stopped searching, stopped worrying, stopped having to reel from one crisis to the next. He has time, now, to mourn, and that thought is the one that has him sink down in the grass and weep, emptying out all the resentment and bewilderment and guilt that has followed him ever since the day that Feryn died.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, some time later, and reaches up to grasp it in his, uses it to help himself back up onto his metal feet. He’s stopped crying now and things aren’t  _ better.  _ They’ll never be better. But they are different, and he supposes that is enough.

“Let’s go home,” he says and Oscar nods.


	20. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vague spoilers for 174

He shouldn’t be here. He is not entirely sure of where he  _ should  _ be, if he’s honest with himself, but he definitely shouldn’t be  _ here. _

If he could, with certainty, say where  _ here  _ even was, maybe he would have a modicum of belonging to work with, but whenever he tries to pin down specifics they twist away. He feels like he’s overindulged on absinthe, wonders if he is in fact back in his… back in his rooms? There was a time when he was surrounded by… friends? Colleagues?

There was a time when he was convinced to do things that were frivolous and pleasurable. There was a time when he had taken those pleasurable things to extremes.

He is certain?

He is uncertain. He does not know where he is, he does not know why he is here.

He  _ should not be here.  _ There was a task he was supposed to perform. Someone he was supposed to… help?

To love?

Pain lances through his chest as though that thought is made of ice or steel. 

He doesn’t  _ have  _ a chest.

He doesn’t have… anything.

He shouldn’t be here  _ he shouldn’t be here he needs to go back. _

But he doesn’t know where he  _ is,  _ and if he doesn’t know where he is how can he even begin a journey to where he is supposed to  _ be? _

He casts around himself, desperately searching for something, anything, some kind of knowledge, some sort of beacon. 

He has never felt so lost.


	21. Phantom Pain

The range of Zolf’s vernacular vocabulary often astonished Oscar - for a dwarf who claimed to know only Dwarvish, English, and of all things _A_ _ ncient Greek  _ he had cultivated a range of obscenities from, Oscar was almost certain, every corner of the world.

There was a timbre to them, as well. A straight, west country  _ fuck  _ usually just meant he’d forgotten to put enough salt in the sauce for dinner, or he’d slipped and cut his finger, or more enjoyably, that Oscar’s tongue or fingers or cock had brought him close enough to the edge for him to start losing some of that trademarked iron control.

He’d switch to Dwarvish if it was something more serious, if someone else was injured or if Oscar had been audacious enough to try to use the kitchen on his own.

Oscar has learned to listen for when Zolf goes into more obscure languages. He was a sailor, he dropped port all over the globe - he knew swear words in Norwegian, Thai, Mandarin and some particularly colourful words in Egyptian that Wilde was absolutely sure he’d never said in front of Hamid.

Or if he had, Hamid had judiciously ignored them.

These swears were usually said softly, heartfelt in the middle of the night, or in a rapid stream as Zolf clutched at the bench in the kitchen, leaning forward, or once, suddenly, when they were walking through the village after a shop and Zolf had had to sit down on a bench and rub at his prosthetics.

Oscar knew what brought them on. 

“It’s a fucking joke, really,” Zolf said, this time around, sitting up in bed, hands moving over the ends of his legs. They were cut off just below the knee joints, one slightly shorter than the other. Oscar knew the knots of scar tissue and divots of bone almost as well as he knew the rest of Zolf’s body although it was to some degree a private thing. Like everything to do with Zolf’s body, Oscar was meticulous in asking when his lover was comfortable with what he did.

“What’s a joke?” Oscar asked, sitting next him on the bed, putting one hand on Zolf’s naked thigh, not moving lower.

“I know they’re not there. They haven’t been there for years. Gods one of them hasn’t been there for  _ decades  _ so why do they bloody hurt?”

Oscar squeezed his thigh and leant in to give Zolf a kiss on the cheek. Zolf smiled at him, then grimaced and puffed out another curse. Oscar had no  _ idea  _ where to begin with  _ its _ linguistic origins.

“Seems stupid that healin don’t  _ work  _ on it,” Zolf said. “They’re not there no more so there’s nothing to heal, right? But it’s  _ magic  _ and…”

Oscar smooths his hand up Zolf’s thigh and across Zolf’s shoulders. Zolf shifts so Oscar can sit behind him, his own legs either side of Zolf’s waist, ridiculously long by comparison even when Zolf was wearing his prosthetics. He hooked his chin over Zolf’s shoulder, trailed both hands up and down Zolf’s thighs - nothing heated in it, nothing sexual, just touches on skin, reaffirming a connection. He hummed under his breath as he did it, felt Zolf’s beard tickle his cheek as he smiled.

“You can’t magic this away, Oscar,” he said and Oscar didn’t stop his humming, butted the side of his head gently against Zolf’s, resisted the urge to rub up against him like a cat.

The song was an old one, one of the revolutionary tunes his mother had taught him, tinged with sadness but lilting and looping in the Irish way, and he felt Zolf relax back into him as he hummed, breath evening out. The hands that had been anxiously rubbing at the stumps of his legs stilled, and Oscar put his over them, lacing their fingers together and rocking slightly as the song came to its end. 

He felt rather than heard Zolf give a sigh, the last of the tension leaving his body as he leaned back against Oscar.

“Still hurting?”

“Not so much,” Zolf said. “Not so much any more.”


	22. Drugged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one got away from me a bit, may have to polish it up and finish it later :D.

Wilde is long limbed, gangly, fully two feet taller than Zolf and as such absolutely impossible to maneuver around when he’s off his tits.

“‘Tis most embarrassing,” Wilde slurs as Zolf all but shoves him up against the wall of the corridor to their room. “I assure you Mr Smith I used to be far better at holding my…”

“Shut up, Oscar,” Zolf says. 

“Still if having a few too many is enough to get you to manhandle me I’ll…”

“You don’t want to finish that sentence, Wilde,” Zolf snaps, looking up and down the corridor to make sure they haven’t been followed. This was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission. The last stop on the road before they headed to Japan. The Harlequins  _ should  _ have vetted every damn person at this party and yet here was Oscar, limp wristed and grinning down at Zolf with eyes that were wide and dark and far too focused on Zolf for his liking. “It’s not your fault… entirely that you’re like this, someone drugged us.”

Oscar’s mouth drops open and he slaps his hands to his cheeks in a gasp. It’s… actually stupidly endearing and Zolf quashes the urge to shake the man. “Scandalous!” Oscar says.  _ “Drugged!  _ By the gods!”

“Probably not by the gods but yeah the effect is much the same.”

“You’re all right though, aren’t you?” Oscar says. “Why are  _ you _ all right?”

“Because I’m a dwarf and I don’t drink like I want to forget my own name. Or at least I don’t when I’m working. You really didn’t need the third glass, Wilde.”

“It’s been  _ months  _ and I have a  _ reputation  _ Mr Smith.”

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Zolf mutters. There are footsteps on the stairs, it’s almost certain their absence has been noticed. Zolf can’t hope to get Wilde out of here without someone seeing him - he doesn’t know anyone who can be so loud when he’s not even speaking, but the corridor isn’t empty of doorways, so he picks the first one he finds and opens it, shoving Wilde inside.

Of  _ course  _ it’s a godsdamned bedroom. It’s pitch dark so Wilde is even more useless in here than he had been outside. Zolf casts about for a wardrobe big enough to hold them both, somewhere they can hide and hopefully out wait the searchers. There’s a large one near the doorway. As quietly as he can, he opens it, then pushes Wilde inside. Wilde  _ giggles.  _

_ Gods. _

He climbs in next to the big idiot and pulls the doors closed behind him, kneeling down so he can look through the gap between them. His visibility is poor as shit, but not as poor as it would be for Wilde. Behind him, he feels Wilde slip down to his knees. “I don’t feel so great, Zolf,” he says.

“You’ve been drugged, but if you throw up on me I will drown you in a bucket.”

“Missed you threatening me,” Wilde says. “Signs of normalcy in these fucked up times.”

Wilde does  _ not  _ usually swear. He considers it sloppy use of language. He also doesn’t usually have that lilt to his voice, a certain trip to his consonants and shape to his vowels that sends a weird shiver down Zolf’s spine.

“Can you be quiet?” Zolf says. “They’re coming.”

“Mmmm, can be,” Wilde says, and Zolf nearly jumps out of his skin. Wilde’s voice is far, far closer to his ear than it should be and Wilde’s hot breath tickles the hairs on the back of his neck. A long arm drapes itself over Zolf’s shoulder and he can feel the press of Wilde’s entire torso on his back. “Tired,” he says. 

That’s  _ not  _ a good sign. “Stay with me, Wilde,” he breathes. 

“You smell nice. Solid and strong.” Zolf wants to tell him to be quiet but he’s speaking so softly that no one would be able to hear him except Zolf, even if they were in the same room as them. Zolf wants to tell him to back off, stop being quite so close, except that there is something different about this, about being so close to him when he’s vulnerable and somehow more and less Oscar Wilde than Zolf has ever seen him.

He needs to concentrate on the door, make sure they’re not discovered. 

He needs to not think about the comfortable weight of Oscar’s arm over his shoulder.

He needs to  _ focus. _

#

Oscar wakes with a pounding behind his eyes worse than the morning after his most decadent night at Trinity. His mouth feels like something crawled into it and died. He groans, reaching for magic to heal himself but coming up against the barrier of his shackles, then groans again.

“You’re awake then, good,” Zolf says. “Was getting worried.”

“Why are you in my bedroom, Mr Smith? I dislike witnesses to my shame.”

“You don’t remember?” Zolf says, and there’s something different in his tone, something that makes Oscar blink his eyes open wide, wincing at the bite of daylight in them. He turns his gaze to Zolf who is sitting in the armchair of Oscar’s Tahan Estate room, a book open in his lap and one eyebrow raised.

“Mr Smith if I have done something inappropriate and have no memory of…”

Zolf chuckles and shakes his head. “No. It’s all right. You weren’t… quite that far gone.”

Oscar swallows. “I can’t remember,” he says. “Nothing past the first glass of champagne.”

A tension leaves Zolf’s shoulders. “Well that’s to be expected, given what they dosed you with. It’s bloody inconvenient, not being able to use magic to purge poison from you, you know that right?”

Oscar winces again and rubs at his temples. “I am aware. We escaped, I take it? Unless our foes have managed to infiltrate the base and scatter Curie’s minions to the winds.”

“We got out. I had to keep watch, make sure the drugs didn’t do any permanent damage.”

“Well then,” Oscar sits up gingerly, realises he’s in his pajamas, wonders how he got that way, if maybe Zolf had helped him or if he’d been coherent enough to do it himself. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve woken up with less than perfect recollection of my previous night’s activities.”

Zolf’s lips twist in a peculiar expression. “Yeah well. We might have to reconsider letting you drink or eat anything next time we go on a mission.”

Oscar pouts and is somewhat surprised to see a hint of a blush under Zolf’s cheeks. “It’s been  _ months  _ since…”

“...you last had champagne. Yes you said. But this is the end of the world we’re talking about, Wilde.”

Oscar flops dramatically back down on his pillow. Now that he thinks about it, the last time he had champagne was in Paris, the bottle that Zolf had brought down before dousing him with water. The memory brings a smile to his lips, despite the pounding of his head.

“What’re you grinnin’ about?” Zolf says.

“Nothing in particular,” Oscar replies.

“Well if you’re feelin’ up to it Curie wants a debrief. Something about finally getting us on the way to Japan.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Oscar says, and hears Zolf get to his feet. He turns to his side so he can look at Zolf, who is studying him with a critical eye. Healer, Oscar reminds himself. Cleric. Colleague. “Thank you for chaperoning me, Mr Smith,” he says. “I promise to be more responsible next time.”

There is a quirk to Zolf’s lips as he gives a curt nod. “Sure you will,” he says. “Meet you downstairs then?”

“Mmmhmmm.” 

Oscar watches Zolf leave, wondering why he can feel an ache of something missing in his chest, a hint of a touch he can’t quite remember.

He shakes it off and reaches for water. Dealing with a hangover, he can manage. 

Dealing with Zolf Smith might take a little more skill and time.


	23. Sleep Deprivation

Sometimes when you’re on the hunt you have to go without sleep. There’s no point in losing your quarry because you’re lazy, and adrenalin and focus will go a long way towards keeping you alert.

This is different.

This is delirium and uncertainty and blurred vision.

This is a headache that feels like it’s going to press its way out through his eyes.

This is his hands shaking, his heart rate tripping up and going down again in uneven, desperate rhythms, his head drooping forward, eyes desperate to close…

“You can’t…” Wilde’s voice… is it Wilde? Is he here with Wilde? Or is this just another hallucination? “Grizzop, I’m so sorry, you can’t fall asleep. Please. Look at me. Stay with me.”

Grizzop blinks upwards into Wilde’s face. He looks terrible. He looks like he did in Damascus. Hollowed out and worn to the bone. But desperate, as well, pleading, wanting Grizzop to do… something. What? 

“If the goblin sleeps, we kill him,” a voice says, rough and deep and alien, and Grizzop turns his head but the world tilts and he cannot make out who it is, why they would be so cruel? He just needs a rest - a little nap then he'll be fine. “You know the rules, Mr Wilde. You want him alive he stays awake.”

“Grizzop, please.”

He should just… lay on hands. He could cure fatigue so easily. Take this feeling away, the heaviness and the awful, thumping pressure. He tries, moving his hands towards himself, but they’re restrained somehow. How did he miss that happening? 

Wilde is leaning forward, Wilde’s hands are at his cheeks, Wilde is crying, tears tracking down his face. Why is Wilde crying? “Please, Grizzop, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Wotcher,” Grizzop gets out. At least he thinks he does. He doesn’t recognise his own voice, his mouth is dry and his head tips forward, eyes drooping closed.

_ “No,”  _ Wilde hisses, and there is a sharp pain in his cheek - Wilde has  _ hit  _ him, a slap across the face that cuts through the delirium for a second, lets connections get made that have been cut and floating for too long.

Right. Captured. Sleep deprivation as torture. Torture for him  _ and  _ for Wilde, because Wilde is the one who has to keep him awake or they’ll kll Grizzop in front of him.

_ Oh my lady save us… _

_ “Please  _ Grizzop,” Wilde begs, hands now smoothing over where he was slapped. “Just a little longer.”

“‘M  _ tired  _ Wilde.”

“I know. I know you are. I know I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he murmurs, eyes drooping shut again. “Not this time.”

Wilde’s pleas are blurring into meaninglessness now and Grizzop just wants to close his eyes, just for a second, just…

… a little while.


	24. Sensory Deprivation

Zolf concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. He’s used to this. He’s gone underground more times than he can count in his life and it’s only ended badly twice. Statistically they should be fine. He can see, the sloping floor of the cavern is easy enough to navigate, it doesn’t matter that the walls feel like they’re closing in, doesn’t matter that he sometimes he catches a whiff of a smell it is impossible for him to forget - fetid and thick and inevitable.

“Zolf?” Wilde’s voice sounds small and distant in the cavern. 

“You right, Wilde?”

“No...t particularly? I can’t see anything.” He feels Wilde’s hand find his arm and he grasps it. 

“Just stick close,” Zolf says, and swallows. “I can see fine.” He can see into the darkness of the tunnel ahead of them, the downward slope of it. He knows with every step they take they’re going deeper, with every step there is more earth and weight above them.

Wilde laughs nervously. “I wouldn’t wander off on my own here, Mr Smith,” he says. “I’m not built for the underground.”

“What, and I am?”

Wilde’s hand tightens around his for a second, and when he speaks again he is more hesitant. “I… didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine,” Zolf interrupts. He hopes the fear in his voice is covered by the grumpiness. It’s a strategy he’s employed before now. “I was a miner I know what I’m doing.”

They’re silent for a little while. Wilde’s hand is sweating slightly in his, but he doesn’t loosen his grip. “You didn’t like being a miner, though,” Wilde says, eventually.

“Any reason why you’re playing twenty questions  _ now,  _ Wilde? I’m trying to concentrate on getting us through here.”

There is more silence. Then Wilde’s voice again, sounding even smaller. “I can’t see anything,” he says. “It’s… hard for me to…”

Zolf stops, tugging on Wilde’s arm to make sure the man doesn’t topple forward, and looks up. Wilde has his bottom lip caught between his teeth and is worrying at it, eyes wide and staring in the darkness, as though he could possibly make them function despite his stubborn humanity.

“Hard for you to…?” Zolf says, and Wilde looks down, not catching Zolf’s eyes, no, but looking near them.

He looks younger, somehow.

“Hard for me to be sure I’m real,” he says, then shrugs, giving a small, nervous laugh.

Zolf blinks. He hasn’t ever considered that. There have been times in his life when he’s been blindfolded, of course, but the idea of total darkness, even with his eyes open, is utterly alien to him.

He remembers Hamid in the catacombs under Paris and his mind shies away from that memory, he doesn’t  _ want  _ to go there but he remembers how afraid Hamid had been and he remembers that on top of everything else he’d been in pitch black.

Hamid who was now in Rome. Or dead.

“You want me to talk to you? So you feel real.”

Wilde gives that nervous laugh again. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

“Not… especially,” Zolf says. “But maybe not talk about mining and being a miner down here. Just… a bit close to the bone at the moment, know what I mean?”

“Oh, oh of course. I should have realised.” They start walking again, Zolf tugging at Wilde’s hand gently to get him moving. “So is there anything else you would prefer not to talk about?”

Zolf lets out a bark of laughter. “Maybe I should ask you questions instead, Wilde,” he says. “You can listen to the sound of your own voice.”

“Now that’s hardly going to make me feel more real,” Wilde says, and there is a smile in his voice now, which is something of a relief. “I talk to myself all the time.”

“Didn’t you research all of us, before you became our handler back in London?” Zolf says. “Surely you  _ know  _ everything about me.”

“Knowing something and  _ understanding  _ something about a person are two entirely different things, Mr Smith,” Wilde says. “I know, for example, that you were navy, then took a foray into piracy…”

“Free tradin’,” Zolf says, and glances up to see Wilde grin.

_ “Free trading  _ then, and then you were a cleric of Poseidon, and now…”

“Now?”

“Now you’re my partner in crime, my fellow revolutionary, my companion in the creeping darkness, my eyes and my light.”

Zolf doesn’t really know how to react to that. “Well one of those is right, I guess.”

“I don’t know the  _ whys,  _ Zolf, I only know the  _ facts.” _

“It’s really not that interestin’,” Zolf mutters. 

“Au contraire, Mr Smith,” Wilde says. “You’re a fascinating study and I have been keeping a list of questions I would love answers to.”

“You’re weird, Wilde.”

“I have been accused of this in the past.”

Zolf heaves a sigh. “Go on then,” he says.

“You’ll indulge me?”

“If it’ll keep your mind off things, why the fuck not?”

He feels Wilde’s fingers squeeze around his and his heart does a funny little skip in his chest. “Thank you, Mr Smith.” 

Zolf looks back up into Wilde’s face and is caught by how open his expression is, right now, as though without the capacity to  _ see  _ he has forgotten he has the capacity to be  _ seen.  _ It’s oddly endearing, and Zolf looks down, feeling a little like he’s seen Wilde naked or walked in on him in a compromising position, and notices that the ground is beginning to slope upwards. 

“So,” he says, picking up the pace a little. With any luck they’ll be through this tunnel before Wilde can make him recount his entire childhood. “What do you want to know?”


	25. I'll Just Rest Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard Carter Joins The Fray

The sound of the spike slipping out of his leg is almost as bad as the sound it made going in. He’s not going to scream, not this time, not with the gin lady looking down at him (although how much she can see is debatable) but it takes too much effort not to make any sound at all. Once he’s free and the healing potion has done it’s work it’s time to negotiate.

He really should have paid more attention in lessons that weren’t to do with treasure in school. They probably had tips on how to get on the good side of angry paladins of Artemis, because before he’s completely sure of how, he’s being ushered into the waiting room with the illusionary entrance and handed over to bank guards. 

This is  _ not  _ what he’d had planned for the day. That said, the guards aren’t the only ones in the room and he looks up from the argument about how they’re going to suppress his magic into one of the most handsome faces he’s ever seen.

He blinks, tilts his head. There’s something very familiar about said face, and he realises with a jolt that he’s seen it before, on the stage in Trinity.

“Aren’t you Oscar Wilde?” he asks, as they take him out, but the man is occupied with the people who were discussing whether or not it was a good idea to kill him so he supposes he’s not going to find out any time soon.

They clap him in anti magic shackles and search him for lockpicks (they don’t find all of them, because Carter is  _ too good)  _ and they put him in a cell and he slumps down, rubbing at his leg.

He’s very tired. What with the curse and the falling into a spike pit and the failed goblin negotiations and the  _ losing all that godsdamned treasure… _

It’s been a very, very bad day. A bad week. Possibly a bad lifetime. He lies back on the small cot and stares at the ceiling, thinking about being captured, thinking about a certain pretty faced man raking his eyes up and down his form.  _ All right, I’ll take him. _

He’ll get some sleep, then he’ll see if Oscar Wilde is interested in giving him some work, and if he isn’t, he’ll escape and move onto something else.

_ I’ll just rest here for a bit,  _ he thinks to himself, closing his eyes. Howard has become used to taking rest where he can get it, after all.


	26. Concussion

Oscar is used to Zolf being as solid as a rock - immovable (stubborn, irascible, grumpy,  _ adorable)  _ so seeing his head snap around as the flail connected and Zolf simply  _ crumple  _ was inconceivable to him for a few seconds.

Then he was striding forward and skewering the last of Shoin’s lackeys through the neck with his rapier, a satisfying spray of arterial blood splattering his arm and staining the puddles around them dusky red as he collapsed.

“Nice one, Wilde,” Barnes said. “Your sword work is getting…”

Oscar couldn’t hear what Barnes was saying, or he could, he just didn’t care right now, rushing to Zolf’s side instead and kneeling in the mud.

Zolf was unconscious, but breathing, blood seeping from a nasty wound on the side of his head. Oscar reached for magic without thinking, once again (every time) coming up against the wall that was his anti magic shackles.

_ “Barnes,”  _ he said, but the man was already beside him, helping him get Zolf upright. Zolf’s eyes fluttered open, another good sign, but Oscar’s heart wouldn’t stop hammering against his ribs in fear. 

“Ouch,” Zolf said. “That fucking hurt.”

“You know you don’t just have to stand there and take damage, Zolf,” Oscar said. 

“Didn’t think he’d hit me. He hadn’t managed to hit anyone else.”

“Everyone else moved out of the way when he swung, you big idiot.”

Zolf snorted, then winced, reaching one hand up to his head. “I’ll just…” 

Oscar saw the familiar light of his magic begin to swirl around him but it sputtered and died suddenly, Zolf lurching forward and retching. “Ungh…” he said. “Can’t.”

Barnes swore softly. Luckily no one else was injured, but Zolf being out of commission when they were still in danger was not a good thing.

“Here,” Oscar got an arm around Zolf’s waist, Barnes on the other side, helping him to his feet. “Potions?” he asked Carter.

“Been out of them for weeks,” Carter said, cheerfully, just as Zolf lurched forward and vomited copiously on the ground. “There you are, old chap,” Carter said. “Better out than in.”

“Fuck off Carter.”

“He’ll be fine,” Carter said. “He’s only ever that grumpy when he’s fine.”

Oscar reached up and brushed a lock of hair away from Zolf’s forehead. He remembered fleeing through the streets of Paris, reaching for his magic and failing, the noxious swarm of poison in his veins stopping surging up and yanking power from his fingertips just as it should have manifested.

Zolf looked dreadful, skin pale under the ruddiness of his tan, eyes hollow. 

“Stay here with him,” Barnes said. “Carter and I can scout, make sure there aren’t any more of these.” He nudged the prone body of the man who had hit Zolf with his toe. 

It was muddy and bloody here so Oscar supported Zolf to a stand of trees that offered the bare minimum of shelter against the elements before they both slumped to the ground. Zolf was cursing under his breath, unsteady on his feet, but he sat down happily enough next to Wilde, both of them leaning against the bark and wincing against the unpleasantness of damp earth under them.

“Hate this feeling,” Zolf said. “Feels too much like seasickness.”

“You get seasick?” Oscar said, surprised.

“First month out, yeah,” Zolf said. “Everyone did, really, just some were better at covering it up than others. Knew an Admiral who would throw up the first five days of every voyage.”

“How charming for him.”

“We called him Admiral Chunder,” Zolf said. “Behind his back, any way.”

“I can imagine it wouldn’t have been good for a young sailor’s career to do so to his front.”

“Heh. No.” Zolf took a shaking breath and Oscar felt him clutch at the fabric of Oscar’s shirt. “Ooof,” he said. 

“I could take off the an…”

“No,” Zolf said. “No you couldn’t.”

Oscar sighed. “No, you’re right. I couldn’t.”

They sat in silence for a while, aside from the drumming of rain on the leaves. It wasn’t cold, and Oscar checked on Zolf every now and then, to find him doggedly keeping his eyes open. When he began to droop against Oscar it was somehow difficult to jolt him back. 

“Hey, no sleeping Mr Smith.”

“Wasn’t going to sleep,” Zolf said, but he shifted a little. “Talk to me, keep me focused?”

“How would you like me to do that?”

“You tell stories, don’t you? Or you used to? I mean,” Zolf sounded embarrassed. “You’re a writer, at least.”

Oscar went still. They hadn’t talked about this, Hamid and the others had never asked and it was information that Oscar didn’t give out willingly. People assumed he was a wizard and he did nothing to disabuse them of the notion. Methods of magic that weren’t sanctioned by the university met with suspicion and ridicule. 

Of course the meritocrats knew how he wove his spells, but no one else  heard the underlying tunes, the songs his mother had taught him, full of history and magic and power.

“I was a playwright,” Oscar said, slowly. “And I sang, occasionally. For the right audience.”

“Not a good audience, then?” Zolf said, and Oscar felt a sudden pressure behind his eyes, glancing quickly down at Zolf, but the dwarf didn’t look offended, in fact he was smiling slightly.

“You’d be a perfect audience,” Oscar said. “Story or song?”

Zolf tilted his head. “Story, I think,” he said. “A song might send me to sleep.”

Oscar’s lips quirked and he mentally catalogued the tales at his disposal. “I was working on a new play, before I left for Paris,” he said. “But I don’t think you’d be very interested in a bunch of British nobility examining their own navels.”

Zolf snorted. “Well you’ve got that one right.”

“Well then. How about this.” Oscar took a breath, closed his eyes, and started to speak. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He tells Zolf a version of the Selfish Giant with a touch less religious imagery at the end :D. Zolf thinks it's silly.


	27. Extreme Weather

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. The waves crashing against the rocks, the rain lashing against his face, the crack of lightning across the sky.

The trip overland to Constanta hadn’t been difficult, at least comparatively. Zolf had rattled in the back of carts and bartered for passage with merchants. He’d contemplated asking Earhart to take him back, but the thought of getting back on the airship had made him hesitate, and something about this trip - well. It wasn’t a penance. He wasn’t going to the coast to ask Poseidon for forgiveness.

Exactly he opposite, really.

He sends her a note, telling her where he is going, and that if he survives he will offer whatever services he has left to the Harlequins. He is willing to face his past, so long as his future is free of one thing first.

It annoys him that the legs last the entire trip. Poseidon isn’t just going to let him stop. Poseidon wants confirmation, wants a ritual or some shit. He shouldn’t be surprised. Dramatic git. But it’s inconvenient. He thinks, now, he has work to do. He thinks, now, that perhaps he can find a place with the Harlequins. But he can’t do that if he’s expecting his legs to give out at any second and so he has to make sure Poseidon knows how he feels and Prague is  _ landlocked _ and… there is a certain poetry to this. 

A certain set of forms that have to be followed.

He told himself he wasn’t going to re-equip himself for the journey and so he is still wearing his shirt and pants, no armor, no weapons, when he reaches the coast in Constanta. He is as he was when he faced down Mr Ceiling, plus two watery legs he never asked for - a bleak outlook on life and too much grief and guilt. Along the way he had scrounged for food, used the few coins he still had in his purse, but it’s more than one night he went hungry on the way. A paladin of, of all things, Dionysus finds him sleeping in a doorway of a home in Bucharest and insists on giving him supplies enough to last him the rest of the way to Constanta. Zolf doesn’t speak Bulgarian but knows the woman is doing her best, following the ways of her god, but still he turns her down when she offers him more than just the food. She’s beautiful, in her own way, he guesses, but he has little interest in sex at the best of times and absolutely none if it's some sort of sacrament. 

This is not supposed to be a journey of comfort and pleasure, and possibly Dionysus understands that. More probably, Dionysus doesn’t care.

The storm has been brewing for a few hours by the time Zolf gets within sight of the sea. He’s tired and he’s hungry and he feels a little like he’s made a pilgrimage, and that’s darkly amusing to him, that he could have come all this way in penance with the intention of rejecting a god, not in one's service.

Facing the water now makes something shift in his chest. He has heard rumours, that the sea is unpredictable, storms like the one in Dover have become far more commonplace, but this one makes the waves he faced in that tiny coracle look like a child’s painting. 

The sea is angry.

_ Poseidon _ is angry.

Zolf squares his shoulders and makes his way down to the water. This will not be pleasant, but he intends to make it final.

#

Oscar Wilde does not enjoy the rain. He especially does not enjoy it when he does not have his magic on hand to deflect the worse of its effects. He is wet, and bedraggled, and unhappily wrapped up in a greatcoat that proclaims to be water resistant despite all evidence that it is precisely the opposite.

He isn’t sure what he expects, as he picks his way down the rocks to the water’s edge. The Harlequins had told him where to find Zolf, after long negotiations and mistrustful communications and recriminations and accusations and Oscar had been forced to use all of his not-inconsiderable diplomacy skills to get even this sliver of help from the bastards. 

_ “Why do you want him?” Curie had asked, blank faced and harsh. _

_ “Because, unlike everyone else here, I think he will at least stab me in the front if he decides he doesn’t like my terms.” _

He isn’t sure what he expected, but it isn’t this.

Zolf is sitting on the sand at the edge of the water, rain soaking his  _ snow white  _ hair as he stares out over the ocean. He doesn’t look up as Oscar approaches and Oscar runs his eyes over him to see the stumps of his legs - the ethereal water legs given to him by his god are gone.

Well. That’s going to be inconvenient. 

“Mr Smith?” Oscar says, and finally Zolf looks up. His face is blank, but the expression turns to shock when he realises who is here.

“What the actual fuck,” he says, and his voice is rough and harsh.

“I could ask you the same question. How long have you been here?”

Zolf rubs at his eyes. “Dunno,” he says. “A while.” Oscar glances back up towards the road, where the carriage that brought him here is. 

“Well we should get you out of the rain at the very least,” Oscar says. “Can you get up on my back?”

Zolf snorts. Shrugs. “Why should I?”

“Because I need your help, Mr Smith. The Harlequins told me where to find you.”

“Pretty sure I won’t be much good to you, Wilde.” 

Oscar sucks in air through his nose, then shakes his head. “You can let me be the judge of that, I think,” he says, although in his head he wonders if Zolf might be right.

Still. It’s the only help he’s likely to get. Give some, get some in return, perhaps. “Come on,” he says, hunkering down, presenting his back. There is a long moment before he feels wide, strong hands on his shoulders.

“This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Mr Smith,” Oscar says, as he trudges back up to the road. Zolf is lighter than he would have thought, and his broad chest is warm against Oscar’s, his thick arms looped around his neck. The weight is, somehow, a comfort. 

“Shut up Wilde,” Zolf says, and Oscar smiles to himself in the rain.


	28. Hunting Season

This was  _ not  _ his element.

For all his field work in the past few years trying to fight his way through undergrowth in the dead of night in a forest was something Oscar would never have pictured himself doing in a thousand years. There was, however, a certain familiarity with the thump of blood in his ears, the thrill of fear over his skin. Each sound in the darkness made his pulse ratchet up further. 

There was moonlight, but not enough in the thick shadow of the forest to do more than make out the occasional shape in the darkness. He knew that the one hunting him had no such difficulty, and his mouth went dry as the reality of how uneven this little competition was.

He moved through the underbrush, wincing every time his feet hit the ground and made noise that would easily be picked up by hostile ears, but knowing that staying still was just as, if not more foolish.

He caught a hint of brighter moonlight, the possibility of a gap in the trees, and made his careful way towards it, hoping for a path, something that would allow him to run. He might not be as stealthy as the one hunting him, but he was, at a pinch, faster. In a flat out dash for safety, Oscar might have the smallest chance of escape.

The clearing opened up under the light of the full moon, beautiful and silver and promising, and at its far end, Oscar can see the path. He took a deep breath, hesitating at the edge, knowing that as soon as he stepped into the light he would be hopelessly exposed. But this was his only chance.

He was stopped after the first three steps. Of course. “You’re dreadful at this, Wilde,” Grizzop’s voice floated down to him. Oscar was flat on his back, he didn’t even know he’d gotten there, but there was a bony goblin knee in his sternum and he was looking up into large eyes that reflected the moonlight like a prayer.

“Well I am in the process of learning,” Wilde said, somewhat breathless. “You need to train me up better if you want more of a hunt.”

Grizzop leaned down and sucked in a breath. “You stink of fear,” he said and Wilde felt a shiver of something else entirely down his spine, and shrugged.

“You’re rather frighteningly competent, darling.”

Grizzop grinned. “Were you going to try to run?” he said. “Across the clearing. To the  _ path?” _

“I can’t be quieter than you,” Oscar said, weakly. Grizzop’s thighs were tight around his torso, and Oscar could feel him shifting his hips back and forth as he spoke. Oscar ached to pull him down into a kiss, but he knew that the hunt wasn’t complete. Not yet. “But I think I can still be faster.”

The laugh that rocked through Grizzop was bright and terrible and beautiful, and he hopped off Oscar’s chest. “Get up then,” he said. 

Oscar’s mouth was completely dry now, but he got to his feet as Grizzop stood in front of him, rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet. The tips of his fingers were tingly and numb, and he didn’t think he’d ever been so hard.

“What do you want?” Oscar asked, even though he knew the answer well enough.

“I want you to run, Wilde,” Grizzop said.

Oscar sucked in a breath. Turned. And ran.


	29. Reluctant Bedrest

“Can’t you just heal it?” 

“No. Not my specialty, Grizzop and you know it. You can take a trip to a temple or you can go to bed, and you’ll be better off if I go in and bring back a potion.”

Grizzop’s normally red eyes were, if possible, even more red, the skin around them puffy and inflamed and his voice sounded an octave too low. It was just a cold,  _ just a cold  _ but it was severe enough for Wilde to be fluttering his hands around in concern,  _ hovering _ as he was about to leave. “What should I do? He doesn’t look  _ good  _ Zolf.”

“Looking good isn’t the whole point of existence, Oscar.”

“Zolf Smith I am offended that you would think I am that shallow,” Wilde said. 

Zolf sighed. “Just keep him hydrated, make sure he eats so he keeps his strength up there’s nothing worse than coming out the other side of something like this feeling all weak. And no kissing or cuddling - this is an infection Oscar,  _ you remember how to deal with infections, right?” _

Wilde looked torn, biting his lip, looking back at where Grizzop was pouting on the bed. 

“Don’t wanna stay in bed,” Grizzop muttered, then trailed off into a deep, hacking cough that made Zolf wince in sympathy. “It’s a waste of time.”

Wilde was already moving back to the bed, a small whimper of distress at Grizzop’s condition escaping him. Zolf caught at his arm.

“I mean it, Oscar,” Zolf said, even as Wilde tugged against his pull, desperate to be closer to Grizzop.

“I know,” Wilde said. “But he just needs…”

Grizzop let out another sigh and burrowed back into the pillows behind him, the pout on his face not even slightly shifting. Zolf sighed as he watched Oscar reach out and feel Grizzop’s forehead, murmuring something under his breath, and turned away. 

He’d buy two potions. Maybe three. And put money on both of the idiots he loved being bedridden for the next few days.


	30. Possession

Of all the perils of the ocean, Zolf hadn’t ever considered  _ this.  _ He didn’t travel by sea any more if he could avoid it. Luckily having a few friends who were more than familiar with airships meant he didn’t have to, not to mention knowing a few high enough level wizards that a teleport wasn’t prohibitively expensive, but Barnes and Carter were so very proud of their new boat and Oscar had thought it would be a fine thing, to spend part of their summer out on the lakes. It wasn’t the open ocean, and so Zolf figured he would be safe. Lakes didn’t tend to have massive tidal surges, and the weather had been predictable enough since the apocalypse had passed.

He, of course, didn’t count for the petulant nature of his former god.

“This is my realm,” Barnes said, stalking towards him. Zolf had never considered Barnes a particularly striking man, but right now, his hair whipping around his face in the wind, his eyes utterly taken up by blue fire, he could understand why Carter was so enamoured of him.

A bit of a shame, then, that he was possessed by a god intent on stalking Zolf like a petulant teenager after a bad break up.

Zolf backed up against the railing of the boat, wondering if his legs could carry him back to shore underwater. He could cast a spell, topple overboard, make sure that Wilde and Carter at least, were safe. But he couldn’t be certain Poseidon wouldn’t decide to toy with them in lieu of him. 

“Sod off,” he said. “There are so many others out there who  _ want  _ what you’re offering. I was never good at being your priest. Just. Let it go. Or something.”

“It’s not about being good,” Barnes said.  _ Poseidon _ said. “I claimed you. You’re  _ mine.” _

“I’m not  _ anyone’s,”  _ Zolf shouted back, and with that he felt power gathering around him, and he saw Barnes, he saw Posiedon in Barnes, hesitate.

“Yeah. That’s why you’re here. You’re here because you don’t want  _ this…”  _ and Zolf raised his hands, suffused with  _ divine  _ light, light that came from  _ within  _ and not from a god, “getting out, do you? You or any of your mates.”

Barnes hissed, distracted enough finally for Wilde to get behind him, for Wilde’s large hands to come down on Barnes’ shoulders with the force of all of his magic, for Barnes to collapse on the deck.

Zolf let his hands drop, let the magic fade, as Carter rushed forward to attend to the unconscious man on the deck.

“Mmph,” Zolf said. 

They made it back to shore. Zolf kept Barnes unconscious the whole way, for safety reasons, but also kept a close eye on the others in case Poseidon thought they would be good targets.

They weren’t, though. Barnes had been easy because Barnes was half his already, despite his insistence on not wanting to go back to the sea.

Once Poseidon got his claws into you, you really didn’t have a choice.

“Yes, Zolf,” Wilde said, as they clambered back on land.

“Yes what?”

“Yes we’ll take boating off the list of holidays we’ll be doing in the future.”

Zolf looked back over the lake. It was beautiful, in its own way. He would never quite lose his fascination with the ocean, but it had always,  _ always  _ been tinged with guilt. “Probably for the best,” he said, and Oscar leaned down and gently kissed his cheek, and they made their way back to the house.


	31. Whipping

They fish him out of the water after three days.

Three days of delirium and thirst and the constant fear of sharks or something worse coming up from below. Three days of the salt of the sea leaching the moisture from his body and corroding his skin. It had rained a few times, and he’d lapped at the drops in desperation - enough to keep him breathing, but not enough to calm the raging saw like pain and dryness of his lips, his throat, his tongue…

They fish him out of the water and dump him on the deck of the ship face first, before a foot lodges under his ribs and kicks him over. Zolf squints up at the sky, at the grizzled face of a human man, face scarred, a patch over one eye.

“You’re a navy man,” he says, and Zolf would protest, or something, but his lungs  _ ache  _ and he’s wrung out from thirst and exhaustion and grief and perhaps he  _ is  _ a navy man, perhaps that is his identity? Gods knows he needs one. He’s happy to take whatever he’s given, at this point.

The man shoves his boot into his ribs again, and Zolf grunts with the pain. He smiles, and the smile is ugly - uglier than anything Zolf’s seen in his entire life.

“Looks like we can get a bit of fun out of him,” he says. 

And Zolf finds that yes, after everything, he can still be afraid.

He’s stripped naked and tied to a post. He’s heard enough about pirates to know what comes next.

They flog him as a pastime, they flog him when they're bored or when they're horny or when they're just passing by for a laugh. The stripes along his back barely have time to heal and he knows they're going to scar. He fades in and out of consciousness and doesn't even have enough energy to wish he'd die, but his damned dwarven constitution won't quit from something as dull and monotonous as pain, or blood loss, and they keep him fed and watered, which is the only blessing in the hazy days of pain that follow.

He cannot remember the face of his brother.

He can remember the sound of his surprised, cut off cry. Can remember the feeling of blind panic and then overwhelming guilt, but Feryn’s face is lost to him.

Sometimes, he remembers to cry.

Feeling something is better than feeling nothing. That's what he keeps telling himself, when the lines of fire start. Until... the storm.

The pirates rush around him, tending to the ship, desperate and calling out to each other in ways that are too familiar to Zolf. He had been part of a crew, once, he knew how they worked.

If he’d been in any condition at all he would  _ offer.  _ Bad as it has been, here, he dreads the prospect of another wreck, of being thrown back into the water with no hope of rescue. 

The water pouring down over him should be cold, but instead it feels like a caress. The rock of the ship should be enough to fling him from side to side, but it feels like he is being gently cradled in an embrace.

He is delirious. 

Lighting strikes the water close to the boat and the pirates cry out in alarm. Zolf’s head droops against his post, and he closes his eyes.

The cacophony around him fades as he gives into his exhaustion.

In his dreams he hears a singular, all encompassing voice.

**I have tried. So hard. To reach you. What will it take?**

Zolf shifts against the pole he has been tied to for days. The storm is silent around him. The ship is still. "Obviously... more than fucking that."

_ Poseidon gives him more.  _

_ Eventually, the storm abates. _

The next morning, the first pirate to go onto the deck finds it slick with something that is not sea spray. She looks down and sees that's because it's… not.

There is a sound, something alien and  _ not right and _ she reaches for her dagger.

It’s whistling.

The dwarven prick is not on his post, and that alone should be enough for her to draw the knife, mysterious blood soaked ship or not. Skies know she'd taken up the whip against him enough times, laughed and jeered and had her fun. He would surely-

But no. He sees her, gives a nod, and returns to the morning work. Whistling. He's adjusting the sails and checking the rigging and... being a good crewman. A valued addition.

The tune he whistles is a merry one, despite the soaked back of his shirt, so dark it's nearly black.

"Why are you loose?" she asks and the storm green of his eyes is, frankly, terrifying as he turns them directly on her and she swears she sees lightning crackle over his fist as it grips the rope. 

"Why are you?" he asks, and she can hear the sea in his voice and she steps back, knife slipping from her fingers, and asks no more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd on that rather grim note we are done! Thank you once again for coming on the whumptober ride with me. That's two in a row I've managed to finish. As always, thanks to my fellow RQGaming writer friends, who are always ready with inspiration, encouragement and enthusiasm. You know who you are, and I love you all.
> 
> See you back here next year!


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